Nonfiction and Essays

While this is a simplistic explanation, I tried to give the basics about what Medicare is and why it exists so that whoever is reading this article would be able to gain a baseline, working knowledge of the program immediately.

The original can be read here. This article made quite a stir on Twitter and other social media platforms that I am active on. After reading it, most people were put off by its strange, authoritative tone. The author had written this piece in a very strange tone, and clearly had not noticed how prescriptive and strange his advice seemed.

Instead of offering platitudes and truths that, while corny, (and expected) may have been helpful to the reader in a broad way, this author chose incredibly specific examples of his idea of “manliness”, seemingly at random, wildly taking aim at the broad target of masculinity with a shotgun, and writing down whatever seemed to cross his mind.

I decided that his intentions had to be explored further. And so, in the above humorous piece, I find the nuggets of truth behind each seemingly random numbered item on the list, creating a parody of character that is both pathetic and relatable.

I submitted this piece to several websites, but it was far too niche to gain any sort of traction. Still, I felt that I had to write it, if only to make better sense of why the original article had been written in the first place.